River City to Host World's Richest Swim
What a headline that would be! Imagine, the international spotlight on our city as the world’s best swimmers churn through the clear (yes, clear) waters of the Brisbane River, past our dazzling new Queen’s Wharf and Howard Smith Wharves precincts.
After all our years of pleading and agitating, authorities seem finally to be turning their attention to the vital role the Brisbane River can and must play in our city’s future. But there is no real benchmark for achievement, and no deadline to spur action.
What we need is a target, a finish line that must be crossed. So here’s the plan.
Recently, detailed plans were released by Brisbane City Council showing how they will further open up our river for tourism and recreation, to tour boats, water taxis, and recreational craft including yachts, boats, jet skis, canoes, kayaks and paddle boards.
We also applaud their news of a $100m project to revitalise a 15km stretch of Oxley Creek over the next 20 years, to turn it into a lifestyle hub. But, there is still little talk about actually cleaning up the river, which we say is fundamental to any plan to refocus Brisbane as the ‘River City’.
Council and the State Government must resolve to ensure the Brisbane River is once again clean enough for swimming. And they must set a deadline to achieve it. The target date needs to closely follow the completion of Queen’s Wharf, say 2025 at the very latest.
Then we herald this splendid triumph by holding the ‘world’s richest open water swimming race’, with a prize purse worth global attention. The course should be set between Victoria Bridge and the Story Bridge, beneath striking river crossings and alongside signature riverfront landmarks and playgrounds, both old and new.
This is not pie-in-the-sky dreaming. It is absolutely achievable. Lee Kuan Yew cleaned up Singapore’s rivers in just 10 years. And when he started, they were like stinking open sewers. By comparison, the quality of our Brisbane River is already infinitely better.
Paris is on a similar mission, and we could well take a leaf out of their book. In July, mayor Anne Hidalgo opened a clean swimming zone in a city canal, allowing urban bathing for the first time since it was outlawed in 1923, presumably because of pollution.
She hailed it a step on the way to open water swim events in the Seine River in time for the 2024 Olympic Games. Mayor Hidalgo is also on an “almost philosophical” mission to take the famed river’s quayside back from cars, reducing pollution and opening motor-free parkland buffers.
Brisbane, meanwhile, is still mulling over whether to bid for the 2032 Olympics. Demographer and social commentator Bernard Salt, who is on board with the Courier Mail’s ‘Future Brisbane’ campaign, says working towards a tilt at the games would help motivate and galvanise us to aim high.
But, while we are 100% behind an Olympic bid, we reckon 2032 is too distant a goal. So let’s instigate our own event inside a decade, focus it on the river, and make it significant enough to garner worldwide attention.
We’ve suggested an open water river swim for very obvious reasons. As one Paris civic leader succinctly explained, “bathing demonstrates that all problems have been solved: cleanliness, riverbank use, industrial use of rivers, transport networks.”
And it would obviously be set against sweeping camera views of a stunning continuous riverside precinct stretching from the completed $3 billion Queen’s Wharf to the new Howard Smith Wharves destination.
The ‘world’s richest’ tag might make it sound like an expensive venture. But it would actually be quite economical as sporting events go. A bit of research into the swimming scene shows a first prize of anything upwards of $25,000 would put our race out in front in the money stakes.
FINA’s (International Swimming Federation) 2017 World Cup open water races carried a total prize pool of $60,000 for the top eight places, with $20,000 for 1st, $15,000 for 2nd and $10,000 for 3rd. All the big open water swimming events on FINA’s international grand prix circuit offer prizes of just $10,000 to $25,000.
It’s barely pocket money compared to the reported $10 million Manny Pacquiao stood to win in Brisbane, or even the $500,000 plus a cut of the gate that Jeff Horn scored for his unexpected victory.
Open water swimming events are held the world over, in the ocean and across bays, in straights and channels, across lakes, and along rivers and canals. They’ve long attracted attention, with the ‘World’s Richest Swimming Prize’ in 1932 offering a respectable £2,000 for a swim in Canada’s frigid Lake Ontario.
The world’s largest mass participation event, the Sun Moon Lake International Swimming Carnival in Taiwan attracts up to 22,000 people for a 3.3km lake swim. River events take place in locations as diverse and far flung as China’s Xinjin River, the Bosphorus in Turkey, River Navia in Spain, Sweden’s Van, and Ireland’s River Liffey in Dublin.
In other Australian cities, some projects are already recasting urban rivers as fun, safe places to swim. I’m thinking of Our Living River in Sydney’s Parramatta River, and the Swim Thru Perth open water swimming event in the Swan River. The Yarra Swim Co. is planning to revive the three-mile race and build a river-fed swimming pool on the Yarra’s banks.
So, what do you say to adding Brisbane to that list? And we can all enjoy the clean, inviting river waters residents of our city used to enjoy, as the Churchie boys did in our photo of their 1937 swim in Norman Creek.
Churchie students completing the ‘Pocket Swim ‘ in 1937
